[""Old Put"" The Patriot by Frederick A. Ober]@TWC D-Link book
""Old Put"" The Patriot

CHAPTER III
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There was no immediate necessity for him to volunteer in defense of the frontier, where the hostile French were gathering, for it was far distant from his home, the forests around which were threatened by no roaming savages with tomahawks and muskets.

But his patriotic instincts were aroused by the reports of massacres committed in other regions; he knew the tide must be met before it became irresistible and breasted in the North.

Four great expeditions were planned by the English to frustrate the schemes of the enemy: against Fort Niagara, Crown Point on Lake Champlain, Fort Duquesne, and against the French in Nova Scotia.
It was to take part in the expedition with Crown Point as its objective that Israel Putnam abandoned his farm, early in the summer of 1755, just when it needed him most, and started on his second long journey away from home.

He reached the rendezvous at Albany, after a toilsome march through the forests that intervened between the Connecticut and the Hudson, and there found three thousand other "Provincials" gathered for the defense of the colonies.

Most of them were sons of the soil, like Putnam, and like him were yet to receive their baptism of fire; but they were sturdy and valiant, though appearing rude and uncouth in the eyes of the British veterans.
The commander-in-chief of the British Colonial forces in North America at the beginning of the war was Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts, and the commander of the Crown Point expedition was General William Johnson, the famous and eccentric "sachem" of the Mohawks.


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